(I am a newer and irregular pipe smoker. My reviews are subject to my preferences and tastes and pipe smoking habits) Smells wonderful in the tin (rich Virginia and dark fruit, some BBQ/smoke) and looks interesting (one giant flake folded over repeatedly). I fully rubbed the entire tin of flake and stored in a mason jar. Came at a decent moisture content. Lit easily, smoked with minimum relights (even outdoors in the fall weather) and had no... noticeable bite. The flavours were earthy and 'meaty', but not very strong. Some sweetness from the Virginia and kept reminding me of grilled steak, that sweetness from the crispy caramelized bits. No real Perique until the bottom of the bowl, where the flavours dropped to a very mild and the pepper tingle came forward. I kept getting a smooth cigar aroma in the room note (wife does not approve) which was pleasant. Overall a nice experience that one could enjoy everyday and worth a try (Flavors aren't too strong and in your face, but nice and mellowed).

I love a good flake. This is definilty a good one. Tin note is nice...fruit, berry, spice. Hand rubbed then gravity fed, it lit very well and stays lit after charring. Top bowl was lightly spiced, faintly sweet and cool. Mid bowl the flavour deepened and the spice was a bit muted. The final bit at the bottom was still quite nice, I sipped from start to finish and I was rather disappointed when I drew the last bit. Not a tobacco for someone wanting loads of fruit and sweetness. A wonderful after dinner smoke.

My tin was more of a somewhat broken flake, but I rather like that. The Kentucky added something of a rough note for me, but added a little (just a little) complexity. The Perique was a little on the light side, but more might have thrown off the balance even more. This is not for those who are looking for a 'refined' smoke, but for those who want a bit of 'fight back' without any bite.

The perique is light, and I generally like a little more of it than is present here, but more would unbalance the blend. There is the hay/apricot/fig notes in play, with a light natural Virginia sweetness. The Kentucky is also light, but noticeable, and adds a slight spice. Burns well dry or moist, though I see some disagree with me on that.

This flake will disappoint a smoker looking for a heavier, more complex blend. The ingredients work very well together in a mild to medium way and is well balanced. This is sort of light in strength, but makes a good all day smoke if you're looking for one. A good, honest, unaffected mixture.

Folded Flake is an example of one of my favorite genres: Virginia/ dark-fired Kentucky/perique.

As a previous reviewer, DK mentioned, it performed best at a very narrow moisture range, slightly drier than normal. Once I got that right everything fell together and I've really enjoyed it.

After aging for two years in the tin all the components are discernible, but it plays more like a 3 piece rock band when everybody's jamming together rather than featuring one particular flavor. It's spicier and has more body than you would get from a typical flake with only Virginia and perique. I attribute both qualities to the Kentucky. The closest blend I would compare it to in flavor and cut would be Solani 660 Silver Flake sans the perique. The perique (and the far superior tin) gives the edge to Folded Flake for my money.

Update (06/12/2010): Once it's dried properly it performs so well it deserves a 4 star rating. A real sleeper...highly recommended!

Not a bad smoke, but I think there are better VA blends out there that cost less. The scent from the tin was pleasant like dried apricots. Flakes folded on top of one another that require rubbing out before smoking.

Not too much moisture content with my fresh 50 gram tin, and it doesn't need much relighting once started. No problems packing, and it smokes well down to the bottom of the pipe.

The taste is pure, mild VA, with a hint of spice. I expected more of a "spicey" taste, but there's nothing too complex here. I don't plan to buy another tin of this, as I prefer Samuel Gawith's Full Virginia Flake for a fuller, sweeter smoke, but this is a decent smoke if FVF is not available.

I found this to be one of those enjoyable while you have it but no real intention to repeat tobaccos. My only real complaint about it is that it performed well at one moisture level only - ONE! If it was too moist, it tasted strange and if too dry, it bit. It had to be the perfect moisture to smoke well, and for me that level was on the very dry but not too dry side. It was not easy to get it right.

At this level, the virginia sweetness was toned down and the spiciness of the dark-fired Kentucky took over with just a whisper of perique showing through. In some blends lightly spotted with perique, this leaf shows through here and there and disappears. With this blend, I tasted a smidge of perique in every puff. Nice! It burned well and needed few if any relights.

Folded Flake is a decent VaBurPer and is recommended but it's also one of those that is so mondimensional (surprising, considering the ingredients) that it doesn't rise up and demand to be in my regular rotation. There just isn't enough happening. Still, it's a good tasting smoke.

McConnell's Folded Flake should be a more enjoyable tobacco than it is. It's pretty to look at in the tin--a golden swirl that would make Rapunzel jealous--and it smells great, too--a sort of hay meets fig meets bruised apple melange.

A VaPer-Bu (which sounds kind of endearing) with a pretty negligible Perique content (at least to this puffer), the blend is dominated by the flavors and aromas of the Virginias. And therein lies the issue. The Virginias in my tin have all the characteristics of leaves that simply need more time to mature. There is a green grassiness to this blend that verges on unpleasant and whatever else the tobacco might have to say is silenced by the whining and wailing and biting of this immature leaf.

I had pretty much the same to say about Stokkebye's Luxury Bullseye Flake, I seem to remember. Then again, I found that green characteristic more forgivable in a cheap and cheerful bulk offering. But Folded Flake comes in at top shelf prices which create high expectations.

I will make no secret of the fact that I love a good va. flake. Add the right amount of good perique, just the right amount, and it really does it for me. Often, blenders just overdo it on the perique, at least in my opinion. Yes, the flavor is good, but it is just to overpowering for me.

Along comes Folded Flake; a va/per with a bit of kentucky thrown in. The kentucky seems to really smooth out the perique, allowing it to come through in full flavor without its characteristic whang. And the va. is nice and naturally sweet.

The presentation in the tin looks a bit of a mess, as these are long flakes folded over, then stuffed into the tin. I've yet to figure out how to actually get a flake from the tin, so just prefer to grab a big pinch direct and stuff it in my pipe. And this stuff is not picky about how you load it. Gravity feed it; stuff it; hell, use a ramrod even. It is a very forgiving tobacco. It also exhibits only minor tendency to bite, but the pepperiness of the perique may fool some into thinking it's a bitey blend.

Folded flake behaves every bit as well as Scottish Cake and Flake. It lights fairly easily, stays lit, and burns well all the way to the bottom of the bowl. You will be dumping gray ashes out of your bowl without ever having to relight but maybe once. Okay, twice if you smoke it in a tall stack or chimney.

I picked up a half dozen tins of this at the Chicago Pipe Show; a good decision. For those who may be looking for a friendly perique blend with excellent, natural tobacco flavor, this may be the one. The texture of the tobacco was a bit stiff or brittle and arrived dry enough for immediate smoking. The flavor is mainly Virginia with just the hint of perique. I did not taste the Kentucky; my guess is that it is there to tame or mellow the Virginias. The tobacco has no bite. It is not a complex smoke, but it delivers a constant, slightly sweetened, Va. tang with just a hint of perique zip. This is a good one, and I will be smoking a lot of it in the future. Well recommended. Paddy.

These are nicely prepared flakes ~ 2" wide that have been folded over in order to fit in the rectangular tin. Brown and yellow VAs dominate but there are some darker browns included. The moisture content was OK for me and little condensation developed during the smoke. The tin aroma seemed all natural and inviting. Packing without rubout, lighting and smoking were effortless and resulted in an enjoyable, relaxing smoke. There was also consistency from bowl to bowl regardless of pipe maker or size. I felt the Perique was toned way down and I tasted sweet VAs until near the bottom of the bowls. However, I'll smoke this blend often.

The first word that comes to my mind while thinking about this flake is "easy": easy to pack, easy to smoke and easy to undestand, a fine starting point for a travel into the world of flakes. The tobaccos are good, in the tradition of the brand, and play their role in a perfect balance: the Virginias give a nice sweetness, kentucky gives body and keeps the heat to a cool level, perique in little quantity spices it up a bit. I've found an excellent burning throughout the bowl, very little relighting needed, not a wet smoke at all. I'm not a perique blends fan in general, but this is one I might want to smoke again.

The name describes the packing, a first. Good old tobacco; no frills but a good body.

A nice natural flake. Similar in composition to Paul Olson's 111 flake, but instead of typical bacon strips it is a single long-wide strip folded over several times into a tin compactly (like Marlin Flake in a can or Long Golden Flake, but more compressed). The extra folding and the aging have allowed the above three tobaccos to meld well.

It brakes apart easy into a thick shag which I just fold into a medium pipe. It burns well and on the quick side for a coolish flake.

It is also similar to P. Stokkebye's Luxury Navy Flake but the burley added to Folded Flake gives it more heft. The perique is light and hardly noticeable. But the combination of the three tobaccos puts it midway between Navy Flake and 111.

The natural sweetness of the virginia base is ever present but toned down a bit due to apparent brown leaf employed and the burley. The burley also leans it to the cool side -- good. It is, nevertheless, on the spicy side as advertised (not bite) with a little more weight than a straight virginia blend.

The room note is light, sort of hit and run I am told. The flavor is past medium in my opinion, but still not as stout as some brown flakes (G&H) or as 111. So if you like 111, here is a slightly milder variation but still flavorful and somewhat spicy.

It is dry (I used one pipe cleaner). Stays lit well. Not hot. Easy to pack. Interesting complex of natural flavors well blended together. I recommend this for the straight virginia smoker wanting more heft and a little spice but nothing real stout. No scenting here that I can sense. I liked my full tin (about 20 medium bowls worth, more in one Connoisseur pipe than in a Bjarne for comparison with several) and have several more tins in storage.

Being a lover of burley, I picked up a tin of this about a month ago. The first thing that I noticed upon opening the tin was the high moisture content noted by pipeco, in his review of the blend. The other thing that I noticed was that the aroma seemed to be dominated by VA, leaving the burley and perique hidden somewhere in the mix. I like to smoke this blend in my Dunhill 4103 w/ bamboo shank. It also smokes well in a miniature bent bulldog by Butz Choquin, that I have. I have found that this blend performs best with at least 30 min drying, and a gratuitous "false light", and thorough tamping prior to smoking. Throughout the first 25% of the bowl, the flavor seems to be over powered by the VA. Initial flavors are typical of a stoved, sweet, VA with a mellow character. The mellowness present is almost certainly due to the burley working its way through the mix as the heat begins to pick up. After the first 25% of the bowl I noticed a consistant flavor of candied apples and caramel that did not diminish until the last 25% of the bowl. As I sat back and enjoyed this blend with a cup of Earl Grey tea, one thing struck me as being odd.... There seemed to be no characteristic spiciness from the perique. Even in small quantities, a blend containing perique will be very obvious but my taste buds just never picked it up. After 5 bowls of this blend I decided to add a pinch of blending perique to a bowl and was met with a very satisfying smoke indeed. All in all the blend is solid, just a little less complex than I prefer.

McConnell's Folded Flake comes as 2" wide flakes stacked and folded. A tad too moist for me upon opening so I tore off a portion of 2-3 flakes and let it dry a bit. I then rolled it into a Nording Beaver that loves Va's. The smoke starts out like a middle weight brown Va. Shortly thereafter the burley shows up. It both mellows and flattens the flavors. Said flavors are sweet , ripe va's with a bit of earthiness from the burley. It seems to contain more burley than Orlick's Golden Sliced or G/H's Brown Flake u/s. More along the lines of Esoterica's Stonehaven, without the stoved Va's. If it's topped or cased {I'd guess not] it's with a light neutral agent. The perique shows up just after the burley and is reticent until the second half of the bowl. It adds a certain spice that counteracts the flatness of the burley. The smoke builds slightly in strength and flavor in the second half. I find it less sweet than McConnell's Scottish Cake ,less exotic than their Scottish Flake and more balanced than their Red Virginia [which also contains perique]. I found it enough different from it's siblings to make it worth buying and I've added a couple of tins to my larder. Worth a try.